Every year, Nikon's Small World photomicrography contest collects the very best in microscopic photography, and every year the results are strange, beautiful, and basically impossible to identify. This tiny cosmos, for example, is soap. Soy sauce looks even crazier:

Crystallized soy sauce, to be exact. Betsy Mason, one of this year's judges, hand-picked some of her favorites from this year's pool over at Wired.

Where to go from here? You can simply appreciate how much microscopic beauty is contained in that soy sauce you just dunked your dumpling in, or you can pick up your $10 iPhone microscope and get to work. [Nikon via Wired]